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At no point in her investigation does Tate allow ___ commentary

At no point in her investigation does Tate allow _______ commentary from present-day partisans to skew her reckoning with past realities.

apposite

ahistorical

anachronistic

disinterested

objective

germane

Sentence Equivalence Questions: Because finding ONE word for the blank just wasn’t tedious enough! If you’re studying for the GRE, sentence equivalence questions can be a bit tricky, and maybe you have some questions about the second Verbal section of PowerPrep. Don’t worry! PrepScholar is here to help walk you through it.

First things first, let’s scan for clues as to how our blank relates to our sentence—of which there may not be as many as we would have hoped for. We at least know that our blank should describe “commentary,” so what else to do we know about this commentary? Well, apparently it’s commentary “from present-day partisans,” or contemporary people who are taking one side of an issue, that could possible “skew,” or cause bias in, Tate’s “reckoning with past realities.”

Ok, so putting this all together, it seems like we’re looking for something that could potentially describe the commentary in a negative way (this is a little bit of conjecturing from the fact that it could “skew” her work), and perhaps it should relate to the fact that it’s commentary from potentially biased people who live today about events in the past? Wow. This is a tough one to predict, but it seems like we’ve gotten as much out of the sentence as we can. As important as it is to try to predict answers, it’s also important not to waste a lot of time—we’re confident we know at least a little about the blank, and this IS a sentence equivalence question, meaning that one important clue will be what answers affect the sentence in the same way. Let’s take a look at our answers with the information that we have.

apposite

Hmm. Not super sure about this word. Let’s skip it for now.

ahistorical

Hmm. The prefix “a-” usually means “not” or “without,” like in “apathy” or “amoral.” So something that is “ahistorical” must be not historical. This word could definitely be used to describe commentary from contemporary people on issues of the past. Let’s keep B.

anachronistic

The prefix “ana-” means “backward” or “against,” and the root “chronos” has to do with time. An “anachronism” is something out of harmony with a specific time, like when we see someone in a movie set in the past with a contemporary haircut. Something that’s “anachronistic,” then is not of the proper time, which could similarly describe views of contemporary people on issues that affected people in the past. B and C are seeming like they could be a good pair, but let’s keep looking.

disinterested

To be “disinterested” in something is to not care about it or have no stake in it. On the one hand, contemporary people couldn’t really have much at stake when it comes to problems of the past, but on the other, the sentence specifically described these contemporary people as “partisans,” meaning they’ve taken a side and are, therefore, interested in the issue. We can eliminate D because it’s inconsistent with other information in our sentence.

objective

Something objective is unbiased, which like D is inconsistent with the idea that these are the comments of “partisans” that could “skew” Tate’s work. Eliminate E.

germane

Hmm. Also not a super common word. If we were stuck here without knowing A or F, we should probably still go with B and C since we know that these answers would frame the commentary as “out of the proper time,” which is consistent with the other information we’re given.

For the record, “germane” and “apposite” could be a pair. Both describe something appropriate or relevant. However, this would frame the commentary in a slightly positive way—why wouldn’t Tate want to include “appropriate commentary”? On the other hand, it is clear why she wouldn’t want to include commentary that doesn’t come from the time frame she’s trying to “reckon.” So, B and C are a better pair.

“At no point in her investigation does Tate allow ahistorical / anachronistic commentary from present-day partisans to skew her reckoning with past realities.”

Indeed, these answers complete the sentence in the same way. B and C are correct.